


Our Miraculous World

by MairzyGoats



Series: Crisis of the Multiverse [2]
Category: Homestuck, Super Mario & Related Fandoms, Super Mario Bros. (1993), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-03-06 13:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18851689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MairzyGoats/pseuds/MairzyGoats
Summary: President Koopa, against all odds and with a killer facelift, has returned with his eye set on an even bigger prize.  When he discovers that there are more than two dimensions, and there is a way to bridge that gap, he seeks revenge on the pesky plumbers and maybe even the Universe itself.But this time the Mario Brothers will have the help of some of the most daring and brilliant minds the planet has to offer.





	1. Belief

"Luigi! Mario!" the cry came from the door, burst open by a young blonde in tattered expensive clothes and combat gear carrying a handheld flame gun.

 

The apartment's occupants--a middle-aged moustachioed man in a buttoned-up shirt and slacks, a younger one in a t-shirt and a ball cap, and a woman carrying a pot of spaghetti sauce clambered in.

 

"Daisy!" answered the younger one, startled yet ecstatic to see the intruder.

 

"You gotta come with me, I need your help!" she replied, letting her gun down.

 

"Why? Wh-wh-what's wrong?"

 

"You're never gonna believe this…"

 

"I believe it," chimed in the older man, reaching for his tool belt on the wall and wrapping it around himself.

 

"...you do?" asked the younger, incredulous at the thought as he was handed a belt himself.

 

"Heheh.  I believe!" he replied, nodding at the blonde.  She smiled...

  


*    *    *

 

"Another dimension, ha."  Perfect Tommy scoffed at the broadcast.  It surprised him sometimes how even though some of the most puzzling things happened to him and Buckaroo and the other Cavaliers, a lot of the general public just went on about their business.  Just another story for the comics. Funnily enough, this time it wasn't them on the screen. And he got to watch it. Nice to see things from another perspective sometimes.

 

"What's this, what are you watching?"  Dr. Sidney Zweibel, otherwise known as the rip-roaring cowpoke New Jersey, stepped over.

 

"Well, you know how things sometimes show up on that public access show?  Wonderful World?"

 

"Miraculous World."

 

"Miraculous World, yeah.  Well, see, these guys from Brooklyn.  Says they hopped to a parallel dimension and fought some lizard people."

 

"Lizard people.  Lizard… Lizardo? They don't mean-"

 

"Nah, it's probably just fake tabloid TV."  He reached up and turned the set off.

 

"Heh, well um.  I mean, how do you know that?  I mean, you know the kind of things we, y'know, deal with now and again about.  Lizard people."

 

"Don't worry about it, New Jersey, it's nothing.  Besides, I know the guys."

 

"You know them?"

 

"Well not personally but, they're just two-bit plumbers from Brooklyn.  Call themselves the Mario Brothers. One of our regulars called in about them when the show started, so I got the lowdown.  Older guy with a moustache, Italian. Mario. Young guy, Luigi. Here."

 

Tommy tore the paper off the printer, special teletype hookups and something they had going called the "World Wide Net", or something like that.  It was a telephone computer network to rival all the others. The big boss had that put in as quickly as possible, and the speeds were unbelievable compared to the old way they used to call up police reports, no teletype or phone receiver mounts or anything like that.  He handed the page to New Jersey, and the good doctor took a look at it. Dot matrixed pictures of two men on the page, a balding middle aged Italian with a moustache named Mario and a Spanish kid about twenty years his junior named Luigi. The Mario Brothers, of Mario Brothers plumbing ("No leak too small!"), and they were Mario in both occupation and name.

 

"Huh.  Brothers, huh?  Look more like cousins.  Father and son, if anything."

 

"Yep.  That's about the weirdest thing they got going for em though."

 

"Weirder than their last name also being Mario?"

 

"Italians.  Y'know?" But New Jersey didn't really.  Poor man, having two first names. Maybe he went by his middle name.  Or his last name.

 

"Hrrm.  I dunno, Tommy.  Something doesn't add up."

 

"I'm telling you, it's fine.  This is the same show we planted a story on."  He said planted, when in reality it was him and Reno Nevada, another famed Cavalier, essentially crank calling the producers.  "They ran the whole thing too. Crackpot Scientist Turns Brains Into Cheese. It was amazing to watch. Hell, we taped it. Showed it to the big _cheese_ himself, proof of concept.  Hole in the system."

 

"Well… what did he say?"

 

"He didn't go for it."

 

"Huh.  Well, uh.  Heh. Hard to imagine.  From Brooklyn you say, these uh… Marios?"

 

"Yep.  Unassuming, normal fellers as can be.  Maybe a little low on the cash, you know that Scapelli guy?"

 

"The mobster who runs half the construction companies in the Tri-State area?"

 

"That's him.  He started expanding to plumbing about a year ago.  Putting the poor mom-and-pops, or in this case maybe-pop-and-brothers, out of business."

 

"Huh.  Shame…"

 

"Yeah.  Now we ran him.  He's got one or two ties to the kind of people we tend to keep on the radar.  World Crime League, all that. Maybe twice or five times removed but he's a scumbag too-"

 

"Uh, no no.  No… Tommy I. I think it's something… something about these Marios.  I have a hunch and I can't shake it."

 

Tommy sighed.  Unfortunately since Rawhide got put on ice, New Jersey was the hunchmaster, the master of the hunches.  And his hunches were wrong only about 12.45% of the time. He calculated that himself, the little nerd. Nerd in spurs, Tommy thought, what'll they think of next. Not that he was much better, of course, hiding a pretty big brain under all that hair dye, but by God at least he had his dignity. And how. Though calculating hunch ratios wasn't worth much to him, when he was more concerned with his guitar solos and research.

 

"All right, tell you what.  We can run this one by Buckaroo and see if he-"

 

"See if I what?" asked a voice, attached to a dark, good-looking man of quiet, reverential dignity in a zig-zag print kimono and large round glasses.  This was, of course, the big cheese himself. The leader of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, and the Chief of the Blue Blazers, Buckaroo Banzai. The one and only, renowned throughout the world, feared by his enemies and revered by comic book fans from New York to Timbuktu.  His arrival wasn't unusual but a bit unexpected, since he was supposed to be at an important conference of scientists that day in Washington DC. And his being in kimono and not his customary sharkskin suit that he always wore to events of any sort, whether they be official or musical, was a surprise indeed.  So much so that Tommy had to point it out.

 

"Well hold on there, Buck, weren't you supposed to be at the big scientist dog and pony show?  What're you doing here?"

 

"And in this getup?  I came back so that we could rehearse the new solos a little before the gig tomorrow in Salzburg.  I'm not missing anything, anyway, something we already proved ten years ago being worked on at Black Mesa. Besides, Hikita-san and Reno are still there, I took the jet car back--what are we looking at here?"

 

"Nothing, Buck, just the Astonishing World and one of New Jersey's famous cowboy hunches."

 

"Miraculous World, Tommy," interjected New Jersey.

 

"Miraculous World, right."

 

"Another hunch, Sidney?"  Buckaroo turned to his old colleague, with whom he had cut open plenty a skull in effort to save the skull-owners' lives--and their success rate was legendary.  "All right, doctor, let's hear it."

 

"Buckaroo, this doesn't add up.  These two Mario Brothers, here," he gave the crude pictures to Dr. Banzai, "claim they passed into a parallel dimension, and stopped a group of lizard people bent on merging the dimensions and taking over.  Now, uh, I think that maybe, maybe these Marios have something going on since, y'know, we. Well you know. Lizard. _Lizard_."

 

Buckaroo raised an eyebrow.  "You think there's a connection with our unpleasant red friends?"

 

"I don't know, but.  I have a hunch"

 

"A hunch," echoed both Buckaroo and Tommy, nodding.  Though when Buckaroo nodded he pursed his lips tighter, contemplating.  Tommy faced away and rolled his eyes. "All right, Sidney, we'll see what we can get.  Start running a deeper search on the Marios, call up the Blue Blazers in Brooklyn and Queens, see who's got any information on the Mario Brothers.  Call the station and get a three-quarter of the broadcast, and maybe call some of our friends and see if they have anything to say. Get on the horn with the Rug Suckers, since the expansion they have to deal with this Scapelli scumbag too, let's get some detective work done."

 

"You sure about that, Buck?"  Tommy questioned one last time.

 

"No," he said, looking at Jersey and curling the corners of his lips up, "but I have a hunch."


	2. The Boss Elsewhere

The super foursome--Daisy, Luigi, Mario, and Daniella, who insisted she wouldn't miss seeing her boyfriend Mario do some real Koopa-Klobbering for the world--clambered into the van and drove off as fast as they could.  Which, given New York traffic was only about forty on average. Thirty for the actual drive and fifty for when the light turned green. Of course, Luigi was something of his usual sea-turtle self and took a few alleys he was sure would get them there faster.  Mario shook his head but, he figured, might as well let his little brother go on instinct because for every three misses he would drive the nail in on a single hit.

 

On the way, Daisy filled them in on what was happening in the Dinosaur dimension.  The evil King Koopa, president of Dino City, and one evil, egg-sucking son-of-a-snake, was somehow back.  It wasn't clear how, or why, but the sign of the K, a sort of lightning-bolt legged capital K that Koopa used as a sigil, was appearing not long after the Mammal Marios left the Dinosaur world, and wherever it showed up, it was followed by terror and chaos.  It was believed that lieutenants of Koopa were carrying out orders given by the man (or lizard) himself which he left in the event of his death. Daisy herself was never sure. From what she knew about Koopa, from the time she spent imprisoned by the dino-dictator, he wouldn't be the type to even consider his own demise.

 

But the days pressed on and the acts of terror became more and more severe.  Businesses ransacked, schools disrupted with all educational material replaced in the night with old Koopa propaganda, thwomps and stompers stolen and used to set fire to buildings.  The Boom Boom Bar was completely destroyed in the big firestorm, Big Bertha presumed dead after rushing in to save a few unconscious stragglers in the club and never returning. This news, of course, did make Mario flinch but Daisy wasn't finished.  Thankfully Luigi took a detour through another alley to miss some work on a manhole and gave Daisy time to finish the story.

 

It seemed one of Koopa's lieutenants was having second thoughts about what he was doing, and had begun to tip the crown off about future hits.  This man, who came to be known as Shy Guy, would leave information in drop points--behind a door, inside of a clay pot, and even under vegetables in the market--all without ever revealing his or even his accomplices identities.

 

The turning point came just within the last three days.  Shy Guy tipped the Crown that the police were harboring a great many Koopa loyalists who were dying to kick the Mushroom family out of the tower and install Koopa again.  So it came as no surprise when the police, led by a thin man in a black mask resembling a bird, seized control over the citizenry and turned the station into an operations headquarters, which they called Castle.

 

The royal family, with its largely volunteer army of loyalists and Goombas, were forced to hole up in the Tower.  Fearing for their safety, the King ordered that Daisy would be under constant watch from two Goombas, and would keep Yoshi at her side for protection.  Never again would Koopa possess the Rock that merges the dimensions, nor the Princess who had the power to withstand the force. Daisy, of course, protested, wanting to stay with her father and fight, but she had no time to prolong her protestations, as the Koopa Troopers broke into the Tower and started making their way up to the top.  Daisy took Toad and Yoshi to find a flame gun and, though ready to come back, was forced to relent as the Troopers had broken through the barricade and were already taking her father. They got a few shots in and dropped down the service elevator, evading the Troopers and making their way to the crater where the meteorite that split the dimensions lay.  Finding it strangely unguarded, perhaps because their forces were concentrated in the Tower, Daisy hopped through the portal and rushed back to Brooklyn, in the hopes that Mario and Luigi, the heroic brothers who risked everything to save the Mushroom Kingdom, would be willing to help her save her people again.

 

"Sounds like a piece of cake," mused Mario, after she finished.

 

"So all we gotta do is stop Koopa in the Tower, right?  Like, he doesn't have the Goombas any more so it's gonna be easier," said Luigi, making a final turn short of the Bridge on final approach to the dig site.

 

"What I don't get is why you think he's back.  We turned that sleazeball into gravy when we blasted him with those devolving guns."

 

"That's the part I didn't think you were going to believe," joked Daisy.

 

"Oh, that's the part?  Hey, Daisy, it's not like I don't believe, I just dunno how it's possible to turn from sludge to man again."

 

"Well, I did say my father came back.  He has a few… issues sometimes, but he's back.  We think the de-evolution process doesn't work, at least not the way Koopa wanted.  And y'know the funny thing is-"

 

"Luigi!  Turn, you're gonna miss it!"  interrupted Daniella, tapping the young man on the shoulder in a very painful way.  He flinched hard and let out a "Hey" as he turned hard to the right across two lanes.

 

"Hey, hey, hey-HEY!  Luigi! Watch the van!" shouted Mario, holding on for dear life.  Instinct is one thing, he figured, but sea turtles shouldn't drive, or listen to pretty girls they have the hots for and drive at the same time.

 

Luigi got the van through the gate, a little violently, ignoring Mario's very loud objection, and skidded to a halt in the gravel by the site.  Mario readjusted his cap and threw the door open, helping Daniella and Daisy out while Luigi threw the parking brake on and rounded the front.

 

"Okay, we have to be ready for anything.  Koopa owns the police and they're all over the place now."  Daisy readied her gun and sized up her troops.

 

"Lead the way, Daisy, I'm ready for 'em," said Luigi, hiking up his belt.

 

"You sure you're up for this, Daniella?"

 

"Well, sure, I wanna see Koopa get his too.  Besides, what's the worst that could happen, right?" she replied, ready for action, albeit the least armed out of all of them.

 

"Okay, here we go," she sighed, starting up to the platform that led down into the site.  She stopped a second and turned, taking a deep breath. "Thanks, guys," she said, smiling, "I couldn't imagine doing this without you but, I really appreciate the help."

 

"Hey, it's no problem, Daisy," reassured Luigi, "me and Mario'll always be there for you."

 

"Yeah, and now that your father's up and walking again maybe we can talk to him about the bill for last time," Mario joked.  Luigi looked taken aback. "Or if anything," Mario continued, "maybe when we're done stopping Koopa we can take a look at those pipes in the air conditioner back at the tower."

 

The four of them headed down into the blast site.  Not but a few months ago did Scapelli's construction workers blast away a pile of rubble on a offshoot from a tunnel and unbeknowingly undo the last efforts of Daisy's mother, the Queen, to close the portal between the dimensions so Koopa could never get to her child or the Rock, the fragment that focuses the cosmic energies and makes travel to the Dinosaur world possible.  And after that, the story of the Princess, then a university student studying dinosaurs in Brooklyn, and the Marios, two simple plumbers caught in the middle, is fairly well known.

 

But what wasn't known by those parties involved in the (supposed) demise of President Koopa was that travel between the dimensions doesn't go unnoticed by the wrong sorts of people.  Of course, more of that will be revealed in its own time, but suffice it to say that people trespassing on private property--especially when it's owned by someone skeevy who has his fingers in every business from the south of Newark to the tip of Long Island--get noticed just as easily, if not more so.  Man's greed knows no bounds, whether he be a lizard or a monkey-boy.

 

Though the coast seemed clear, team Super Mario was about to have a rude awakening.

 

"All right, one last question," started Mario, ever the pragmatist.  "What if Koopa put some goons on the meteor after you left?"

 

Daisy confidently brandished her gun, "I guess we fight em off."

 

"Riiight.  Remind me to never get on your bad side.  C'mon Luigi, you and the Princess can go first."

 

"How come us, Mario?" asked Luigi, almost indignant, if not a little empty.

 

"If you gotta ask then I ain't tellin, got it?  C'mon, meter's running and Koopa's got the tower."

 

"All right, Daisy, come on."  Luigi reached for her hand and grabbed it.  The two of them stepped to the edge and were poised to jump.  Daisy pulled the Rock from beneath her blouse and pointed it to the wall of solid rock before them.  It rippled, letting them know it was safe to jump through. They looked at each other, bent their knees and as they were preparing to leap…

 

A woman screamed behind them.

 

"Hey!  Hey, you bozo!  Get your filthy hands off of her!" came Mario's voice shortly after.

 

Luigi and Daisy turned fast to find three surly men in sharkskin suits manhandling Daniella and Mario.  Judging from the amount of product in their hair and the rings on one of their fingers, they surmised the worst.  Though, they really didn't have to, because one of them started talking.

 

"Mr. Scapelli doesn't take kindly to trespassers on his property."

 

"Scapelli?" exclaimed Mario.  "But he got blasted back when-"

 

"Hey, don't yell down here, heh?  You wouldn't want to cause an avalanche all over the place and crush your girl, right?"

 

"It's a cave-in, not an avalanche, you stunod!" cried Daniella.  "Rrgh! Lemme go!"

 

"Not until Mr. Scapelli has a word with you."

 

"Yeah, sure," scoffed Mario, "be great to have a word with that monkey."

 

Before the man with the big mouth could make a snide remark back about his boss, the third guy turned just enough to catch a glimpse of Luigi and Daisy at the edge.

 

"Hey, you!" he shouted, pointing.

 

Mario turned his head enough to see the big goon heading slowly for the kids, bottlenecking them in.  "Luigi, take the Princess and get outta here!"

 

"B-but Mario, we can't leave you and Daniella" shouted back Luigi, nervous about the big guy but just as nervous about what they were going to do to his brother.  Father? Uncle, mother, whatever.

 

"Forget about me, Luigi, you gotta help Daisy save the Mushroom people.  Get her and the Rock outta here, now!"

 

"But Mario, wh-what am I supposed to do?"

 

Mario struggled against his captor as he was finally being dragged out.  "Use your instincts Mr. Sea Turtle, trust the fungus!"

 

"Guess since my father's the Mushroom King he means me…" Daisy mused, smiling a little as she reached for Luigi's hand.

 

"But what about Mario, and Daniella?" Luigi pressed.

 

"They'll be fine, come on," she reassured, and grabbed his hand tight.  "Let's go."

 

"All right," he relaxed, nodding.

 

The big man, taller than Luigi by over a head, stopped in front of them and cracked his knuckles.

 

"Hey-hey, sorry man but uh, we gotta go now," Luigi mused, smiling goofily.

 

"You ain't goin nowhere until the boss is done with you.  Sides, there's nowhere to go. Except with me."

 

"Well, uh, sure but.  We got a thing we gotta do, so."

 

"So, later!" yelled Daisy.

 

"Yeah, later."

 

"You.  Ain't. Goin- HEY!"  And with that Luigi and Daisy, hands firmly entwined, jumped backwards and into the apparently solid rock wall, fizzling through the crack between the dimensions and heading off, ultimately, to the Dinosaur world to save the Mushroom Kingdom.  The goon, dumbstruck, leaned in and tried to tap the stone, but it had gone solid again, and he had lost the kids.

 

He went back up to report to his boss, who by this point was preparing to load Mario and Daniella into a van.

 

"What is this, you're just throwing us into the back of a van like cargo?" Mario protested, still struggling against the bigger, stronger man.

 

"We got rights too, we ain't chickens," added Daniella.

 

The big guy by this point had had enough.  "Shaddap, you two," he grumbled. "Youse got a big ride ahead of you and this here van's gonna be your noble chariot.  So keep quiet before I makes your ride a little more bumpy, if you know what I mean."

 

"Come on, if Scapelli wants to see us we-" Mario stopped.  He noticed the van was emblazoned on the side with the words _ Scapelli Construction - Plumbing _ and it looked an awful lot like the guy driving it was one of the knuckleheads from the Riverfront Café from the day before they all ended up in Dinohattan.  "Oh, you gotta be kidding me…"

 

Then they were summarily shoved into the van and the doors were shut and locked.  By this point, the big man who had failed to collect the kids started telling the mouth about what he saw, but was quickly hushed and told to keep it to himself and keep watch here for more trespassers.  The mouth then headed across the site to a parked black Lincoln, the big luxury kind--boxy and wide as a city block with vinyl over the back, New Jersey plates, and very heavily tinted windows. When the mouth approached, the back window rolled down and a figure could just about be seen in the back seat.  He looked about as wide as a tree and in an impeccably tailored suit, his face obscured by shadow but had a very large, hairy hand, attached in the usual way via an arm that raised itself to the glass of the half-lowered window.

 

"Boss, we got two of em.  The other two got away down there so I'm leaving Frankie here to keep an eye out.  We'll get em."

 

"...the girl with em, the Italian one.  When we get back to Jersey I wanna see her first.  The stugonz I don't care, just hold him til I'm ready."

 

"But that's the guy, boss.  The guy from-"

 

"I know who he is.  I wanna talk to the girl.  You got a listening problem?"

 

"No, boss."

 

"Good, so when we get to Jersey, get her in my office, capiche?"

 

"A-alright. Sure, boss."

 

"Now get your butt in gear and follow the van."

 

"Sure, boss."  And with that, the man with the mouth clammed up, ran to the driver's side door and hopped in.  He turned the key and followed the van out, leaving Frankie, the lone goon who saw the Princess escape with Luigi, there to lock the gate back up and stand guard, waiting for them to reappear from their little Houdini episode.

 

The dust from the departing cars cleared and Frankie was left in the stillness, still processing how two people could have jumped through solid rock.  And just when it seemed his day couldn't get any stranger, from the shadows emerged an old man, had to be somewhere in his seventies, with flaming red hair and ashen, almost jaundiced skin. He seemed to be holding what looked like a bird cage with an old brownie projector and a lot of other science stuff inside.  Frankie nearly did a double take seeing him, as he couldn't believe that such a man could possibly be real. Soon, though, it proved the man was not only real, but he actually could speak. Somewhat.

 

"Hello, there good-a sir," said the red-haired man, in the thickest, almost comical Italian accent Frankie had ever heard.  And his nonna was from the Old Country, he had heard plenty of real Italian accents.

 

"Can I help you? This here's private property, Scapelli Construction," Frank fired back, still incredulous that the man was there at all, let alone trespassing.

 

"Oh, that's-a true.  But-a we're from Yoyodyne Laboratories.  We work-a with the University and we, uh, come to set up this equipment."

 

"University?  Contract was terminated after the incident, so I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

 

The red-haired ghost turned to his left and nodded, and from the shadows emerged another little gray man, balding and in a quiet tweed suit and thick glasses, and Frank was astounded that not only this fire-headed bozo but another one were hiding in the shadows on his watch.  He must have been seeing things, or maybe those two hypnotized him.

 

"My colleague an I are gonna be in an out just for the day, no trouble to you or anybody else in this-a whole wide-a world.  Besides I got it all in-a my hands," he said, cheekily.

 

"Hey, I'm asking you to leave, this is private property."

 

"Don'na worry, monkey-boy.  We not gonna stay. We're-a gonna go home.  And then. Then it's gonna be the real-a show…"

 

The little gray man in glasses pulled out from under his jacket what looked like a ray gun out of a classic sci-fi flick from the fifties, and to make it look even more ridiculous it had two forks sticking out of the top with enormous potatoes shunked onto them.

 

"Hey, what is this crap?  Get your kid's science projects out of my face and get off Mr. Scapelli's land or there's gonna be-"

 

But Frankie never got to finish his threat before the old ghost yelled "FIRE!" and the gray man in the tweed suit pulled the trigger, letting loose a bolt of green, potato-fueled plasma that connected with Frank and sent him straight to the ground.  His eyes bolted permanently open from the shock as he collapsed, reaching the earth with a resounding  _ thud _ , never to discover why he saw two people disappear into a rock or what these two nefarious nobodies were doing as his nervous system overloaded and his mind went dark.

 

" _ A fanabla, puttana idiota! _ " shouted the old man, breathing heavily, as if that nice guy performance took a toll on every last one of his nerves.  Whichever he had left by this point. "Imma be glad when-a we can finally rid ourself of-a the monkey-boys!"

 

He started to make his way to the pit, dragging his little machine with him.  His accomplice followed quickly behind, still brandishing his potato-powered death ray.  The old man turned and nearly bumped into the other, causing him to fume and smack him on the head.

 

" _ Tanti person' idiota! _ " he murmured, slapping his sidekick's head again for good measure.  "Put-a that thing away and gedda rid of the monkey-boy before somebody-a see!"

 

The little gray man, battered as he was, complied, throwing the gun back into his coat and rushing to the body to drag it away.

 

"And hurry uppa, John Mud Head, the bus, she's-a not gonna be waiting uppa for you!"  And with his last rage-filled retort, the old man descended into the pit, carrying his birdcage full of science.  The body of Frank disposed of, John Mud Head made his way after his boss, and soon all was quiet again in Brooklyn.


	3. Getting Into Sea Turtles

Sea turtles, it is believed, navigate vast stretches of the ocean almost entirely by instinct.  From the moment they hatch in the warm sands of the beach, they make a beeline straight for the sea, risking their tiny lives of under an hour to reach the place their parents were from, parents they probably will never meet in the possible century or more of life laid out before them.  If they survive at all.

 

Some turtles migrate, spending seasons of warmth in the northern hemisphere, then making their way down to the reefs near Australia, and then back again, stopping now and again to nest in shallow waters, and occasionally when the time feels right go ashore to lay eggs before returning to feeding waters and continue living their lives, and they never carry a road map or ask for directions.  They simply trust their instincts and the bountiful ocean rewards the best of them.

 

For the most part these turtles are solitary creatures, since they hardly know their own brothers and sisters if any of their family, and they never stop to chat about the finer points of life and contemplate their place in the Universe when they're busy waddling like bats out of hell to the sea, where their tiny turtle bodies are less likely to be nabbed by a passing gull.  As such they tend to keep to themselves, and leave little to chance.

 

Still, even though they spend most of their life clinging to life and swimming for survival, occasionally they come into problems.  Perhaps the eggs hatch in the midst of a flock of birds, or the babies can't quite make the run due to obstructions. Or even an adult turtle might find its way into a net or an area their shell can't quite clear.  It's at this point where the noble sea turtle and its mighty instinct need a little push. And though they wouldn't always admit it, the help they receive from whatever kindly hand doesn't go unnoticed. After all, sea turtles have long memories.  Somewhere up their in their proud heads must be the recollection of someone they found to appreciate over the years when they were in a scrape.

 

So it was with Buckaroo Banzai, the samurai of science, the mongol maestro, the lonely hero who knew both deep love and unending sorrow.  He surrounded himself with a particular set of people, people he knew he could depend on in a crisis or when the chips were down, but could also carry one another in all their endeavors.  Here was a man that knew great loss as well as success. Someone who knew that even with someone beside you, you still sleep alone and wake up with yourself. That gentle stoicism of his own catchphrase.  No matter where you go, there you are. Optimistic, but tragically practical on many levels.

 

Perhaps that was what made some of his relationships so special.  When he could find someone who could really get it, really feel something.  Either the itch, the fever for the sea and the need to find your tiny way there no matter the cost, or even, dare one say it, the truly deep recesses of the lonely heart in a cold unforgiving ocean.  He thought about these people a lot. Those he kept close. Those that kept him close. His parents, long since murdered. Hikita-san. Penny. Peggy. And Rawhide. He had been thinking about Rawhide a lot recently.  It had been about ten years since the number two Red Lectroid John Bigbooté shot him with a poison dart, and was rendered all but dead. John Parker assured them that there was no cure known to their science for the poison, and in spite of years of biomedical research not even the greatest minds in human medicine could crack it.

 

Though, in a painfully detached sort of way, Rawhide was still with them.  If anybody in the Institute truly knew what it was like to sleep alone in the company of others, it was Rawhide.  For nearly ten years he slept in the deep freeze, missing out on countless adventures. The Red Lectroids returned and left again, newer and more vibrant members joined the team, they all tussled with Hanoi Xan and the World Crime League more than once.  The peace they slowly worked on behind the scenes with both the White House and the Kremlin. Penny… He definitely missed out on Penny. On many a sleepless night Buckaroo went downstairs to check on him, brought him a cup of coffee, and talked. Maybe he couldn't hear him at all, maybe he could.  He would watch the EEG closely during his tales, and once in a while he swore he saw the indifferent pen scrawling on the sheet wiggle after a bad joke. Though, being a scientist, he wouldn't admit it without further test. Which required coming back another night with another cup of coffee. Funny thing was, Buckaroo was never really sure, he just had to keep testing with more cups of coffee.  By this point, so many years in, one could easily assume the research was funded by Maxwell House. Buckaroo himself took tea, and reminisced with Rawhide while he watched the leaves spin in the pot and the pens on the EEG twitch. But every long night, as all good things must do, came to an end, and once more Buckaroo and Rawhide slept alone.

 

Rawhide's presence was sorely missed, even now, in the middle of rehearsal.  He had a way of tickling the ivories that brought the group together--not that Lady Gillette was particularly terrible, but it was certain that she and Perfect Tommy had a different dynamic.

 

"Dagnabbit it, Tommy, you keep missing it," she groaned, slamming the keys on the Steinway.

 

"Don't bother me so much as it does you, honey.  Don't get so bent out of shape over a couple of bends," Tommy retorted, setting up for an innuendo as he fingered up his guitar and set off a soulful, Texas cowboy sounding bend, gently letting the string go up and down under his finger like a violin.  He really was, in his own way, an artful guitarist, but Lady Gillette was hardly impressed. Nor would she be with his anteceding comment, "Treat em like a lady, I do, and she purrs just as well. You'd think you'd appreciate that one more."

 

She knew, as did Buckaroo who was watching them (and simultaneously thinking about Rawhide), that he was always out to get a rise out of her.  And of course, somewhere deep inside himself Tommy knew that it never worked. Though he figured someday he'd just once force a smile on that frigid yet devilishly ravishing face of hers.  And that was reason enough to put up with her protestations, and occasional Texas titty-twisters.

 

"The part's written, Tommy, so's I can play and Buckaroo can harmonize with us over the bassline.  You can't go messing that up before you start in, you'll steal the thunder!"

 

"Oh I'll steal something, sits about between the collarbone and your diaphragm."

 

"Hell if you will, hogging the spotlight with that area unzipped and exposed for the gals up front."

 

"Aw come on, that one hurts  _ me _ in the area between my collarbone and diaphragm…"

 

Buckaroo furrowed his brow, for a brief minute making him seem like he was elsewhere.

 

"Hey, Buckaroo?  You with us?" asked Lady Gillette, about an eighth turn softer in volume, which for her was tantamount to whispering.

 

"What do you think about the line, Buck--is she crazy or what?" asked Tommy, trying to steer the conversation somewhere productive.  Just in case Buckaroo really was thinking about something else, he figured.

 

Buckaroo pursed his lips a moment, then brought his eyes back from whatever part of outer space they were trained on to Tommy.  "I think she's right about it musically," he said, without a single hint he was ever thinking about anything else, "but I don't hate what you did with it."

 

"See, I- wait, pardon?" stammered the Lady.

 

"Tell you what we'll do.  Keep that transition, it works if you ditch the written stuff and vamp a bit on the two-five-one for a couple bars.  We'll move the written stuff down for after Tommy's part, then I can take the solo as written leading into the horns coming back in."

 

"You sure it's not too late?  Salzburg's tomorrow, after all."

 

"We'll just have to tell the Brothers about it before the show so we don't scare them.  They'll be playing the same part on the solos anyway, we're the ones out of order."

 

"Always a diplomat, huh Buckaroo?" joked the Lady.

 

"If it worked on the Soviet Union it should work on rock-n-roll."

 

"Hey now, Buck," retorted Tommy.  "Red commies is one thing, but nothin' ever worked to tame rock-n-roll."

 

Buckaroo curled up the corners of his tight lips.  Every so often a glimmer like that made humanity worth the extra effort.  His smile proved brief, as another would enter the room shortly and break both his reverie and their rehearsal.

 

"Hey, Dr. Banzai!  Looks like the hunchmaster was right again," said the woman in the doorframe, known to her friends and acquaintances as Mrs. Johnson, and known by all for her highly... restorative cooking, as well as her brilliant and capable mind.  She also had an ear for music, and no doubt she had been there a spell in the control room before announcing her presence in the studio. Her silence was, of course, promising, because she was also known to never wait for something to conclude if she thought less of it.

 

"Aw, rats," murmured Tommy, as if New Jersey being tight tarnished his nominative perfection.  "You sure, Mrs. Johnson?"

 

"Sure as Buckaroo's right about your solo.  Sorry, Lady."

 

"I'll cut my losses, thanks," replied Lady G, her piano-playing, pistol-packing hands raised in quiet resignation.

 

"Mind letting me know what he was right about?" asked Buckaroo, cutting right through the cliché.

 

"We ran a general sweep looking for the Marios and it turns out their apartment came up empty, and recently too.  The local ladder reported being called to the place for smoke. Pot of sauce was left on the stove, place deserted.  Landlord said the Marios weren't usually like that but probably had a call for a last-minute job and headed out. Connection at the phone company said nobody made any calls to that number."

 

"All right, what else?"

 

"A van marked 'Mario Brothers Plumbing' was spotted by the riverfront, by the Brooklyn dinosaur dig.  It went missing about the same time a large convoy of cars was seen leaving the area and heading south.  We ran the plates."

 

"Registered to a local scumbag with a suspicious distaste for research science, I take it?"

 

"Either to Anthony Scapelli himself or to companies he owns."

 

"Shoot," said Tommy, "Scapelli's a third-tier criminal, Buckaroo.  Knows a guy who knows a guy who's connected to the World Crime League."

 

"Sounds like our Mario Brothers are in trouble," chimed in Lady Gillette.  "What's a scumbag like that got against a pair of local plumbers?"

 

"What every scumbag businessman has against competition," continued B. Banzai, "but these Marios might have something in particular."

 

"Maybe it's an Italian thing.  Mario and Scapelli are both Italian, maybe there's some connection there," mused Tommy, perhaps still hoping New Jersey was just tilling at windmills.

 

"Seems too simple.  I thumbed through those dossiers you printed out.  There's an altercation listed between a Scapelli-owned plumbing contractor and the younger Mario, and witness reports of the elder and Scapelli himself en contra at the dig site on the day it closed, the same day the report from  _ Miraculous World _ claimed the 'Super' Marios saved the parallel dimension."

 

Mrs. Johnson produced two more pieces of paper for Buckaroo to thumb through.  "Whatever the case, there are at least four missing persons now. Mario and his ward Luigi, Daniella Verducci--Mario's girlfriend--who was seen with them in the last few hours but not since, and this girl."

 

She handed him the pages.  Each had a picture, equally dot-matrixed as the previous two of the Mario brothers.  One was of an Italian woman, dark and slender, and overly tanned, the aforementioned Daniella Verducci.  Nothing impressive but who dares discount anything anymore? After all, the Cold War was over and it would only be seven more years until the end of the twentieth century.  The next image caught Buckaroo's eye immediately. A blonde girl, 20, occupation listed as "student".

 

"I know this girl…" he started, immediately flooded with memories.  He made a point of remembering the names and locations of just about every Blue Blaze Irregular and potential candidate.  This one attracted his attention fairly recently for being one of the youngest published archaeologists and, though still junior, was chosen by the university to head the Brooklyn dig.  Not, of course, without some duress. The reason she was published was because she was the only archaeologist in any capacity to suggest that something wrong that more dinosaur bones seemed, whether in stereotype or truth, to be discovered in the middle of nowhere and only after someone caught sight of them.  Her crazed suggestion, perhaps from the passion of youth or the inspiration of an inquisitive mind, was that urban planning trumped science more often than we cared to admit. Something about the drive, her spunk. Perhaps a future intern, especially since on the strength of her chutzpah enough the university gave her stewardship of the dig against Scapelli himself.  Her name was…

  
"...Daisy Diana Fulton.  The foundling spitfire archaeologist from NYU.  According to this she went missing after the incident, three whole months.  What's the connection?"

 

"Landlord said a girl matching her description was seen running up to the apartment."

 

"So the Marios have landed between a rock and a hard place here, haven't they?" joked the Lady.

 

"Question is, is it up to our level, Buckaroo?" asked Tommy.

 

"It's certainly not beneath us," he replied, his eyes growing tighter, as it was clear the gears in his giant brain were turning.

 

Lady Gillette, ever the pragmatist, broke the reverie.  "What are we gonna do then? We're running a little thin now, what with Reno in DC and most everybody else in Europe gearing up.  It's just you, me, possibly Tommy, Mrs. Johnson, and-"

 

"Uh?" came a new voice.  A tall, thin man appeared behind Mrs. Johnson, in spangles and spurs and holding a hat taller than he was.  "What, um. What's going on here, now, what… what's up? What's new?"

 

"Looks like Scapelli kidnapped the Mario Brothers, Sidney.  Feel like strapping on your six shooter one more time."

 

"Well I, um.  I'll have to call the wife and tell her I'll be late."

 

Buckaroo smiled.  "Looks like we have enough for a posse.  Mrs. Johnson, you said they were heading this way?"

 

"That's right, Scapelli's main office is in New Jersey, we think they're headed that way."

 

"That means we'd better call in the Rug Suckers for backup, they can get to Scapelli's place faster than we can."

 

"Right," acknowledged Mrs. Johnson, turning to go.

 

"And Mrs. Johnson?"

 

"Yeah, boss?"

 

"Grab your keys.  You can ride with us, too."

 

She smiled wide.  Mrs. Johnson, ever the bridesmaid when most of these things went down, didn't get to ride with the Cavaliers that often, so it was either the fate of the world or a special occasion.  Knowing the great Buckaroo Banzai, however, it was probably both.

 

"So, uh.  Hm. What's the um.  Ahem. What's the game plan?" inquired Zweibel.

 

"The plan is we bust in, and bust the Marios out, and see what they know about the unpleasant friends of friends of Anthony Scapelli.  Hopefully quietly."

 

"Knowing us, that ain't gonna work," mused Tommy.

 

"Nothing's impossible, Tommy.  Maybe unlikely but never impossible."

 

And with that, the plan had been set.  Buckaroo Banzai was going to meet Anthony Scapelli, and hopefully get some answers about the lizard people from the other dimension.  Or, at least, to provide closure to Tommy about New Jersey's little hunch.


End file.
